I know there is a lot of people here who are in love with the lore and way more familiar then me, and that is the reason why I would like to ask you few questions about Elf Mages. I am curious which elf race fits the most to the Mage lore and WoW theme - Void Elves or Night Elves? Who were the most famous Mage leaders of these two races? I assume Night Elves fits more to the Arcane magic, but what about Fire and Frost?
I know Blood Elves are more oriented to fire, but I am more curious about Void and Night Elves since I am planning to RP as one of these two, and beside that, a bit more knowledge is always good to have.
Okay jokes aside and not just pointing at nelves and calling it a day, I think you can really make an arguement for either of those two.
With the void elves their famoust arcanists are the same as blood elves given they diverge from that affiliation, so you have Grand Magister Rommath, you have the Ban’dinoriel where the magisters of Silvermoon were able to keep up an unpassable arcane barrier that was only brought down by one of the magisters betraying the others. Umbric is also the main void elf character we see (apart from Alleria) and he is another magister, though again I think personally that the blood elven history holds more weight than the void elf stuff.
Night elves have a pretty massive history with the arcane. You have the whole history with Azshara’s kingdom and how her people drew from the Well of Eternity, which became the maelstrom and is the reason Azeroth is fragmented into several contintents rather than being a Pangea-esque supercontinent. You have the naga, the highborne who tried to show the other night elves how powerful the arcane was by conjuring a massive storm over Ashenvale, you also then have the nightborne who share some ancestry with the kaldorei.
I think ultimately they’re all arcane, split into three for gameplay/spec reasons. I’m not 100% sure on this though but I believe it’s less about wielding fire or frost and more about using the arcane to make fire or frost, if that makes sense.
If you want to RP a night elf mage, there are certain things to keep in mind.
Night elf society abandoned the practice of arcane magic after the Sundering and the fall of the Kaldorei Empire. Those who refused to give up the practice were expelled, and most of them sailed east, where they founded Quel’Thalas and became high elves.
That said, there remained some Highborne enclaves, most notably the Shen’dralar of the city of Eldre’thalas (now known as Dire Maul) in Feralas. These continued to practice arcane magic away from the main night elf society. The Shen’dralar were welcomed back by Tyrande in Cataclysm, which was the lore justification for making night elf mages playable.
Your night elf mage would be either a Highborne, raised and educated in the Highborne ways, and thus not a part of night elf society until very recently; or a regular night elf who decided independently to pursue the arcane after the Third War, either from the Highborne or from one of Azeroth’s other cultures. In either case, you’re likely to be looked down upon by traditionalist night elves, but may fit well with more adventurous ones.
(My character is of the latter kind. She began studying in Dalaran during BfA, so she’s pretty new to the arcane arts.)
This is pretty nice explanation, I appreciate it a lot!
So when since you became a Dalaran studen, I assume you started to learn the arcane magic, do you have any interests to learn more about Frost and Fire spells and magic or you just want to be extreme and more oriented on one school of spells?
Just to add to this, the arcane-wielding night elves/highborne was just about tolerated back into the society in cataclysm and many disliked that decision, especially Maiev the leader of the wardens, so she and other night elves started killing highborne in secret but it was all put a stop to during cata itself, we also learn that the highborne are limited in practicing the arts of arcane by the nelf leadership since they complained not being allowed to use it freely, and then during BFA when they arrived on the battlefield to help their night elf brethren they were shocked that the other night elves cheered for them, since they had not had any such appreciation before from the larger night elf society.
A small addendum to this – there was a whole 2,700 year gap between the War of the Ancients and their exile, which was declared after Dath’Remar and the other Highborne wanted to show to the night elves why their magic use shouldn’t be banned by conjuring a magical storm over Ashenvale. It was intended as a display of power and mastery over magic; that they can control it without losing themselves like those who sided with Azshara, therefore justify overturning the ban.
But they really miscalculated how badly the lowborne night elves were traumatised by the War of the Ancients. All the storm really ended up accomplishing was provoke even more fear from them which lead to Malfurion exiling them, because trying to execute them all would have provoked another war since the Highborne wouldn’t have gone down peacefully.
Even though it’s already been brought up in the thread, I just want to emphasise that within the field of arcane magic there seems to be more emphasis on the different schools of arcane magic (such as abjuration, transmutation, etc etc) rather than which element you choose to manifest it as.
Edit: There’s a great link to the lore surrounding the schools in the post below this one.
While in terms of gameplay, mages use Arcane, Frost and Fire, in lore, everything they do is Arcane, which is then used to create (or summon, I believe both cases have been present in the lore) those Frost and Fire spells.
You´ll also often see NPCs that have titles such as Telemancer, Conjurer and so on. In lore, at least Kirin Tor divides magic into multiple schools, which most mage RPers tend to follow. So instead of Fire mage, you´ll have mage who specializes in creating various shields, barriers, wards and so on, or a mage that is focused on perfecting creation of portals, teleportation, and turning people into sheep. https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Arcane#Schools_of_arcane_magic
And edit because I forgot to reply to the main question: I´d say blood elf/high elf/void elf (collectively people reffer to them as Thalassian elves) is more fitting as a traditional mage race. While night elves have mages, outside of small group of surviving OG Highborne (the original caste of night elves which eventually mostly evolved into Nightborne, naga and Thalassian elves), there haven´t really been any noticeable night elf mages in 10000 years. Meanwhile, Thalassian elves had magic as core of their culture for the last 7000 years (and much more before that, while they were still just Highborne night elves).
This, though in The Last Guardian it’s implied that it’s a very normal thing (expected even) for a mage to have an element of preference that comes naturally to them without impeding on their other studies.
And despite frost and fire being the ones depicted ingame, you also have lightning/air depicted in that novel and in Chronicles 2 we find out that ogre mages had an affinity for earth prior to their discovery of shamanism as they reverse engineered their way into shamanism from arcane magic.
Also it’s my duty to inform you that the idea of mage’s elemental spells being “arcane shaped to mimic the properties of elements” is not really supported in the novels and gets frequently debunked in them. The only source on wowpedia just links the fireball spell without any added context in the hopes you don’t check it, which is a disturbingly common theme on wowpedia.
The spells mages cast have real elemental spirits which was first a concept introduced in The Last Guardian when Medivh and Khadgar discuss the latest heated topics of Dalaran, which at the time was “where does the fire come from?”
Khadgar said that some believe you create a mimicry of those elements through arcane means, which Medivh shoots down instantly as the one (1) objectively wrong answer. Mages can’t know the right answer because of the nature of magic, but this is the one actually wrong answer.
Medivh offers instead that you tap into the elemental planes (though this is considered very costly), or call the essence of that element from your surroundings which gives the implication that frost magic is stronger/easier in cold climates than in a desert, because you have ice ready to call upon instead of conjuring it from scratch.
This is later confirmed a decade later in the Tides of War novel when we see a mage’s elemental spell being perceived from a shaman’s POV as the fireball has a real elemental spirit of its own and it’s being forced to do the mage’s bidding. Despite Thrall’s pleading to get the spirit of fire to cease, it’s powerless to resist Jaina’s control due to the Focusing Iris empowering her. At best he could convince the fireball not to incinerate him to ash instantly and instead cause severe burns.
Jaina then goes on to rip water from Thrall’s control to turn it against her, leaving Thrall with earth and air – but they’re battling over open water, so earth isn’t really an option.
He ends up draining the air out of Jaina’s lungs to stop her from incantating, because you need to be able to breathe to invoke.
Later it repeats in Chronicles 2 as Ogre mages used arcane magic to control (read: enslave) the Earth to disastrous effects. In their stupidity they destroyed the Temple of the Elements (now Throne of the Elements as its remaining ruins) by being too careless with their control over the Earth which outraged the elements of Draenor to the point they destroyed Goria in a cataclysm.
While this doesn´t work with fire (because it´s not actually matter), you can make argument in favor of Arcane being transformed into ice, air or earth, as mages have this neat little thing called Conjure Food. Unless there´s elemental spirit of cupcake, it is an example of Arcane being transformed into matter.
I would like to add that this shouldn’t stop anyone from being creative with their magic RP though - not that that’s what you’re suggesting.
Arcane in itself is arguably very close to being its own element and as far as I’m aware one could weave arcane into their elemental spells or have their arcane spells act as a faux variant of an element since that is inherently what arcane is: a building block.
It’s very much mentioned in the novel that the truth will always elude mages and everyone will have their own interpretation on the matter. Because despite that very weird line from Kalecgos about magic being a science, it’s hammered in home more frequently that magic by its nature will always elude reason and definition. The truth is always just out of your reach.
Some mages do believe that you create fire and other elements by mimicking it via the arcane. Medivh thinks those mages should have been expelled from the Kirin Tor, because in his words they spend all this time focusing on meaningless philosophy trying to find an answer to a question nobody cares about - and still arrive at the one wrong answer instead of spending all that time on research that actually matters which contributes to the brain drain Medivh accused Kirin Tor of being guilty of.
In other words, Medivh says that magic works because we know it works. The “why” is irrelevant and getting too stuck on that is the first sign of an incompetent mind that has no place in a higher institution of magical learning.
Medivh wasn’t kind with his critique.
The two things aren’t mutually exclusive. You can conjure water all the same – Medivh asserts as such with his belief that you tap into the elemental planes to draw from. Conjured food doesn’t contradict that.
Some ideas to perhaps think about in regards to what kind of background stories you find interesting:
Night elf mages:
If a Shen’dralar Highborne, consider how the events of Eldre’Thalas/Dire Maul have impacted them, opportunity to play a character with a villainous past through the internal culling of the population, and/or a past rife with magical addiction. Were they left traumatized by the events, or do they somehow justify their past involvement with what happened within their society? https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Dire_Maul
If a kaldorei who grew up with the wider night elf society after the War of the Ancients, what inspired them to pick up magic after it had been shunned by their society for so long? Did they meet someone who changed their opinion?
Blood elves & Nightborne:
Magic has likely been all around them all their life. Easy to explain where they’ve learned their skills from, and they have a society that welcomes arcane. Easy to find a place to belong as a mage, and notable NPC figures for the character to look up to. Gorgeous magical cities to play in!
Void elves:
Exiled from Silvermoon because of their research into the Void. Do you enjoy exploring what exile might’ve meant to your character, and how they might struggle being accepted by a lot of other characters because of the dark power they carry? Just like demon hunters and death knights, void elf is good choice if you’d like your character find it hard to find a place where they feel they belong, or be very devoted to a particular cause/goal because of what they are, never able to go back to their old life. They also have to remain vigilant not to fall to corruption/madness caused by the shadow’s whispers.
Good luck in finding the perfect mage for yourself!
Edit:
Who were the most famous Mage leaders of these two races?
Just to add to the original question, I would suggest creating a void elf without the tentacles, and using the more blood elf looking customisation options and RPing them as a high elf as opposed to actually rolling a void elf mage.
It’s a way easier and more generally accepted concept if you do not actually have much interest dealing with the themes of eldritch horror that is associated with the race.
I´m not suggesting that, rather that we have a canon example of mages transforming Arcane into matter, so transformation of Arcane into water should be possible too, alongside the method with actual elements that is shown in Tides of War.
Good man, Medivh. Was he a fan of the Kirin Tor “schools of magic” or did he sort of shrug off those theories as well?
I won’t repeat what others have extensively covered already, but simply add that there is no “de-facto race” best suited for magic.
As an example, for all of elven history and inherent gifts with the arcane arts, Dark Iron dwarves have had their share of accomplished spellcasters. Same with humans. The draenei also have a history as accomplished mages, though ultimately that practice has fallen somewhat out of favour (I, at least, can’t name any famous contemporary draenei magi).
All of this to say, that there really isn’t a wrong choice here. My only suggestion concerning elves in particular, is that you approach Void Elves with some care. They aren’t just pale Blood Elves, but have a whole additional layer of icky eldritch lore by now.
It is also present in Warcraft 2 and is cast by human mages as an auto-attack.
“The Mages of Lordaeron have the ability to discharge lightning from their hands when entering into a melee. These swift bolts of energy strike their victims regardless of any armor they may wear. Being the simplest of nature’s forces to command, Lightning requires but a fraction of the caster’s mana to employ.” - WC2 Tides of Darkness Manual